Beyond network pictures: Situational strategizing in network context

The present study combines industrial marketing and purchasing research on network pictures with a practice perspective of strategy research to examine strategizing by small firm managers in a network context. Network pictures are framed to function as a part of a situational mechanism of strategy formation, a dynamic process of emergence at the intersection of cognitive interpretation and network-embedded acting. The situational mechanism is presented and the theoretical framework further elaborated through a case study of three small software firms. As a result, the situational mechanism of strategy formation is discussed in relation to how small firm managers make sense of change in industrial networks and reflect it in the strategic activities of their firms.     

Resolving the start-up identity crisis: Strategizing in a network context

The objective of the present study is to examine the strategizing of start-ups in a network context. The paper depicts start-up strategizing as an intertwined activity of identification and boundary-drawing. The questions of network identity and network boundaries become salient in times of disengagement by a primary customer or when there is a need for significant redirection of the business during what is referred to as a network identity crisis. The study emphasizes the viewpoint of an entrepreneur as strategist and builds on the concept of network identity to stress the socially structured individual cognition of who the organization is in light of its network connections. We study strategizing in four start-ups with different identity crises. By applying a grounded theory approach and Gioia methodology, the paper models the dynamics of restart strategizing in terms of its internal and external triggers and the choices when managing three identity-related contradictions. Furthermore, we characterize four alternative restart strategies connected to the identities and boundaries perceived by the entrepreneurs. By embracing the way start-up's identity and its strategy evolve interdependently in relation to the network dynamics, the model contributes to our understanding of those strategizing activities whereby restart can occur.     

Strategizing as networking for new ventures

Strategizing as networking has become a powerful theme particularly in the IMP tradition. This paper focuses on new ventures and how these develop through the relationships formed by them. Strategizing through network development concerns how the firm perceives its network of interconnected relationships and how it interacts with other actors in relation to these perceptions. The aim of the paper is to identify patterns in the network development of new ventures and in how their strategizing relates to this development. The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of three new ventures. The case study captures the firms' ‘stories’ of how the networks of relationships have developed since their start. Based on the case illustrations we identify three patterns of how the new ventures strategize in their networking and how they network in their strategizing. These patterns concern: (1) exploration and exploitation of similarities, (2) knowledge sharing among customers, and (3) developing relationships with mediating partners. All three rely on interaction with counterparts that provide access to external resources which is of particular importance for new ventures.     

企业集群环境下的公司创业研究——网络资源与创业导向对集群企业绩效的影响

环境复杂性和动态性的加强,导致更多的企业采取公司创业战略以获取持续竞争优势。然而,大多数研究忽视了网络资源对公司创业日趋重要的影响,尤其在企业集群环境下,仅从组织内部因素和产业环境因素难以解释公司创业的前因后果。基于网络视角,本文首先对公司创业的三种资源获取方式进行比较,认为网络资源是公司创业活动受益于企业集群的内在原因;进而对网络资源、创业导向与集群企业绩效的关系进行探索性研究;最后对浙江省集群企业的实证研究表明:创业导向、网络资源均与企业绩效有显著正相关性,网络资源显著提高了创业导向对企业绩效的贡献。     

Network picturing: An action research study of strategizing in business networks

Our paper is concerned with how managers understand their surrounding network and what strategic actions they take based on this insight. Recent research in the areas of network management and business relationships shows increasing interest in the interplay between cognition and action, particularly on how managers relate perceptions about their business network (“network picturing”) to decision-making and strategizing activities. In this study, we apply a novel research approach combining process research and action research methodology. Our sample is introduced to business network theories and concepts, and the use and adaptation of these concepts results in managerial options being articulated and applied. Our findings add new insight in the field of network strategy and network picturing. Network picturing represents a way to understand the boundaries of the firm and how this understanding affects managers' decisions. This differs from the fundamental distinction between the external and the internal environments of classical strategy analysis. In terms of network picturing, strategizing is a way to understand the resulting actions or network outcomes that managers see as viable within their surrounding network. We also provide a conceptual process exercise as an example of how this insight can be relevant for managers in their decision-making processes.     

Using actors' perceptions of network roles and positions to understand network dynamics

This article explores network dynamics by analysing how actors make sense of time and space in business networks, and how they act based on these perceptions. The time dimension is understood here as actors' perceptions of past, present and future changes in their network. The space dimension is understood, first, in terms of the network position a company holds in relation to its business partners, and secondly, in terms of the network role it enacts. As such, this study relates three pivotal concepts in industrial marketing: network change, network position, and network role. The link between these three relates to the interdependencies within a network, in that if one company attempts to change its position, this will in turn affect the position of other companies. Moreover, actors' attempts to change their position or role in the network are directed by their subjective sensemaking or perceptions of their surrounding network. In this article we posit that in order to understand network dynamics we must analyse how actors attempt to affect change based on their perceptions of their positions and roles in their network environment. Our analysis suggests that although there are similarities between perceptions by actors holding similar positions in the network, such network positions alone cannot explain their actions. Rather, differences in actors' interpretations and enactments of their network role are necessary to explain their networking activities. We use an extensive case study of the changing distribution structure for seafood in Norway and Japan to exemplify these points.     

Smart specialization in regional innovation systems: a quadruple helix perspective

This article explores Robotdalen, a smart specialization initiative in the region of Mälardalen, Sweden, and its impact on regional innovation systems (RIS). The Robotdalen initiative, with the goal to create a regional center for robotics, was established based on the triple helix innovation systems model of industry, university, and government interaction. This paper aims to understand the dynamic interactions of the smart specialization strategy in relation to the RIS. It also includes the perspective of the fourth helix, which contains civil society and users. To date, there has been a scarcity of research which explores the challenges of quadruple helix models from a micro perspective to understand their complexity. To address this, a single case study approach is taken, which includes a longitudinal perspective of 10 years (2007–2016). The analysis includes micro activities explored from a strategizing perspective. The research contributes by identifying three strategic practices that have evolved over time for Robotdalen. It also presents an empirical operationalization of the fourth helix, as well discusses the arrival of the fourth helix perspective.     

Coopetition strategy as interrelated praxis and practices on multiple levels

Existing research often considers coopetition as something occurring between organizations on a meso level, that is, a relational or company level. This study explores coopetition strategy in the form of activities from a multilevel perspective. The focus is on coopetition praxis and practices and how these are interrelated on the micro, meso and macro levels. In order to improve our understanding of coopetition activities, we use the strategy-as-practice approach and integrate it with coopetition research. The empirical part of this study is based on a single qualitative case study of a coopetitive relationship between a large multinational company and its supplier. The findings show how praxis on the micro level influences, and is influenced by, practices on the meso and macro levels. Coopetition strategy is shaped over time through the relationship between praxis and practices on different levels. Our study contributes to coopetition research by focusing on coopetition strategy as something that is implemented on multiple levels, including the individual (micro) and network (macro) levels alongside the meso level.     

Network position and identity: A language-based perspective on strategizing

This article explores processes of strategizing within business networks by showing how managers employ sensemaking to cope with network paradoxes. It takes the linguistic turn to analyze how participants discursively construct their organizations' identities and positions within a ‘designed’ network context. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer the research question posed so provocatively over a decade ago by Håkansson and Ford (2002): by exploring how companies interact in business networks. Our contribution is to show how firms interact by taking a language-based perspective on strategy to help understand the links between network, organizational and micro-levels of social construction. An in-depth discussion of a case study is presented, with particular emphasis on the identity-constructing processes affecting (and affected by) the positioning and strategizing of various network actors. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical and practical contributions of our analysis, the latter focusing on tensions in Indigenous business development.     

Managerial sensemaking in a transforming business ecosystem: Conditioning forces,moderating frames,and strategizing options

Disclosing the root cause of managerial action in environments undergoing change, is intrinsically linked to understanding how managers perceive both themselves, and their focal network including the broader surrounding environment. Despite an increased research interest into the interlink between sensemaking and strategizing, empirical evidence on how different limitations manifest in the sensemaking of individual managers in specific contexts is scarce.This study focuses on individual level sensemaking in a transforming business ecosystem as a microfoundation of strategizing. It explores the diverseness of managerial sensemaking by comparing noticed cues, moderating frames and sensemaking outcomes as reflected in different strategizing options. The empirical data derive from 52 semi-structured interviews with top managers in a local business ecosystem. Based on our analysis, we develop an empirically grounded model that unwraps the frames that influence how managers perceive and interpret the changing environment and the implications for their business.Our study provides important empirical corroboration to extant research on the cognitive microfoundations of strategizing in networked environments and adds detail to the underlying sensemaking mechanisms at play. The results highlight the local context and the identity embeddedness of focal actors herein, as factors that significantly influence managerial sensemaking in transforming business ecosystem contexts.     

Strategizing through analyzing and influencing the network horizon

How does a firm keep on being valuable in a network? One requirement is that the firm has a sufficient overview of the network and its dynamics. In other words, a firm's strategy depends on the firm's overview of the network—its network horizon. How comprehensive or limited should its network horizon be? Is it necessary to know the network beyond the direct counterparts? Such issues have not received much attention. In this article, we discuss network horizons and argue that limited network horizons are both inevitable and useful. However, such myopia requires that a firm's counterparts effectively and efficiently mediate between the firm and the rest of the network. Based on a case study, we introduce and discuss three mediating functions of counterparts: a joining, a relating, and an insulating function, and we claim that in order to support a firm's strategizing, managers need to analyze and influence counterparts' mediating functions and thereby the firm's network horizon.     

Embedding of a new business as a cumulative process of combining different but complementary types of projects: The case of a project-based firm

Within the industrial network approach, new business formation is a cumulative process of relating the new business to the existing business network over time. This paper combines the literatures on industrial networks and projects (management) to explore the roles of two different types of (temporary) inter-organizational projects in the embedding process. The paper examines the embedding in a network of a new project-based firm that went from being a new entity to becoming capable of taking a stronger network position by using different types of projects as embedding tools. Embedding of the new firm in the business network required the combining of different but complementary types of projects to build a stronger network position. We find that (temporary) inter-organizational projects are tools for embedding the firm in a network of relationships. The inter-organizational projects can provide the firm with opportunities to both discover and develop not only its own resources but also the resources of others, leading it to change perceptions and principles on what resources are useful to access and who possesses those resources.     

Supplier representative activities and customer perceived value in complex industrial solutions

The study of value delivery through complex industrial solutions involves a service-rich deployment of resources, many of which are human. Despite this realization, few studies consider the activities of specific actors in this service-dominant context. Through an exploratory netnography of ten online community discussion boards, this study investigates the link between the activities of supplier representatives and the effects on customer perceived value in complex industrial solutions. The findings reveal four major categories of activity (communication, planning, risk management and coordination) as important sources of intangible value (conceptualized as emotional, social and functional outcomes). The data shows, however, that activities must be executed in a timely, accurate, appropriate and value-added manner. The study compliments research in complex industrial solutions through explicit consideration of activities and their relationship with perceived value from a supplier perspective.     

Network strategies and effects in an interactive context

This paper adopts the industrial marketing approach to investigate how companies strategize in networks, and to link network strategies to different effects. Based on a case study from the optical recording media industry, the paper finds five types of strategies: complementary, shared, copying, company-rooted, and challenging. Effects indicate how the focal company's strategies triggered reactions of various magnitudes and characteristics. Specifically, effects diverge from intentions among parties not considered in the strategy, and increasingly so the more confronting the strategy is. This implies that the kind of strategy matters for the effects. This paper contributes to the growing interest for strategizing in business networks through introducing a typology of network strategies and effects.     

How can business buyers attract sellers' resources?: Empirical evidence for preferred customer treatment from suppliers

This paper describes a study that investigates what makes a buyer attractive to a seller in a business-to-business buyer–seller relationship and encourages the seller to commit to and invest resources preferentially in the relationship. The study helps answer the question, “What is it that the buyer needs to do to create this attractiveness?” The perspective is somewhat unusual in the marketing literature for two reasons. Firstly, because it investigates how the supplier perspective of customer financial attractiveness affects the attitudes and actions of the supplier towards the buyer, rather than taking the buyer's perspective across the relationship. Secondly, the study has relationship attractiveness in terms of financial performance as an antecedent of its relationship constructs, whereas most relationship studies investigate performance as an outcome. The paper develops a model that proposes the seller's perception of customer financial attractiveness, seller satisfaction, and seller commitment as drivers of the seller's preferred customer treatment by allocation of resources to the relationship. The bases for the study's model are the resource-based view of the firm, the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) models, and related resource-focused theoretical streams. The study finds support for the model in the analysis of survey data.     

Network process analysis: An event-based approach to study business network dynamics

To develop business, managers need to understand the dynamic nature of the business networks in which their company operates. Qualitative process research offers a promising methodology to deliver that understanding but does not yet provide elaborate analysis methods applicable to business network research. We therefore introduce an event based analysis strategy developed to study processes in business networks. Employing a longitudinal case on a paper trader's internationalization process in a network context as an experimental arena, we propose three tools for process analysis. First, a research steering wheel that combines both retrospective and real time event analysis; second, an analytical scheme comprising influencing factors, critical events and consequent change; and third, an event trajectory that unfolds process patterns. The proposed strategy offers a viable alternative to social network analysis, network pictures and narrative analysis with which to study network change and dynamics. Elaborating events from a moderate constructivist perspective, it enables the researcher to trace and understand processes beyond mere structural change, and to capture their evolution in a multilayered network context. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and discuss its relevance for research and practice.     

产业网络模型与分析:基于资源网络化流动的视角

本文结合复杂网络理论,提出了一种基于资源流动的产业网络模型。该模型将资源交换和共享所引起的产业发展当作一种互补性资源的合作生产,并考察不同网络结构下资源流动对产业发展的影响。研究表明,在主体具有完全理性情况下,网络的随机化程度越高,产业网络的平均收益增长越快,收益分布偏差越大;在主体具有有限理性情况下,具有小世界效应的产业网络的平均收益增长最快,收益分布偏差最大。     

Facebook上的中国虚像

令人遗憾的是,在全球最大的社交网络平台上,中国企业成了非常尴尬的边缘角色。5月7日,Facebook CEO马克·扎克伯格身穿牛仔裤和运动衫,开着一辆黑色SUV来到位于纽约曼哈顿中心的喜来登酒店,启动了IPO路演程序。一个小时以前,狂热的投资者已经在酒店外面排成了长队。Facebook计划通过上市募资106亿美元     

Planning the Bakalori irrigation project

The development of the Sokoto-Rima river basin as a network of irrigation projects was first envisaged by the FAO in a report published in 1965. It is through this organ of the United Nations that the planning for agricultural development in this part of Nigeria became intimately linked with the desire of the industrial firms in Western Europe, North America and Japan to find export markets for industrial products in agriculture. By 1975, when the first contract for the irrigation project at Bakalori was signed and a company (IMPRESIT Bakalori, Nigeria) was formed, the FAO had already within it an agency (the Industry Cooperative Programme) whose purpose was to promote the penetration of agricultural planning in Africa, Asia and Latin America.     

R&D at Indian Organic Chemicals Limited (IOCL) – from a service to an enterprise: a case study

IOCL is a pioneer in the country in the field of bulk chemical manufacture. The company achieved its leadership position by utilizing the locally available feedstock i.e. ethyl alcohol from molasses and homegrown technologies to produce a range of bulk chemicals. The R&D activity in the company started almost simultaneously with the erection of the first production plant. It was envisaged to play a role of a typical ‘in-house’ R&D set up. Thus, its activities encompassed the traditional spectrum that most in-house R&D departments of the times were built to perform. These were: 1. Supporting ongoing production activity. 2. Value addition by extending the product line. 3. Improving the quality of the products. The R&D department played these roles competently. Towards this end, the department was well served by trained task oriented staff. However, perhaps the very success of its efforts led to the development of a highly inward-looking culture. However, the post liberalization era brought with it a new set of challenges. With entry barriers slowly diminishing, the company was no longer able to sustain its position of pre-eminence in the fields that it was a leader. Local competition by leaner and meaner players equipped with better technology also played its part in this erosion. Unfavourable economies of scale and lower margins on the traditional products led to the management to rethink on future business strategy. A change of course was called for. For a company with IOCL’s resources, the course change that the management thought would preserve share holder value, was to shift the product mix from bulk chemicals characterized by high volume/low value to fine and specialty areas characterized by low volumes and high value. It decided that the R&D would provide the driving force for this strategic change. In essence, the R&D would be supporting a cluster of new activities, which would be revenue generating and thus be able to metamorphose from a cost center to a profit center. In order to play its new role, the R&D required to redefine its own character. Several changes in the existing systems and introduction of some newer management practices were necessary. The steps to be taken were identified as follows: 1. Shifting from a skill-based to knowledge-based staffing; 2. Creating a structured approach to project management; 3. Initiating a multi functional approach to shorten the project time cycles; 4. Putting in place mechanisms to interface and interact with the customers; 5. Inculcate a business orientation into a traditionally groomed group of scientists and technicians; 6. Integrating the activities of R&D into the enterprise resource planning network of the company; 7. Most importantly, set up a mechanism to market the R&D services.